


is it better to speak or die?

by lushology



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Fighting, First Person, Flashbacks, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Nightmares, Original Female Characters - Freeform, Sharing a House, jj is a writer/poet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27977190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lushology/pseuds/lushology
Summary: This time, something in Pope changes, he shifts, and his eyes look a little kinder, more like him.  He doesn’t say he loves me, something I’m almost glad for, it won’t fix anything.  Is it better to speak or die?  He had once said to me, I can’t remember when, a winter, years ago.  Back then, it seemed easier to speak.  Back then, dying would have taken too long.  Now, the words crash over me as I stand still.  I let all the unspoken things poison my blood while I wait for death.  Back then, it seemed odd that there would only be two options, and now it’s clear: you cannot stay silent and live as though you have been loud all your life.
Relationships: JJ/Pope (Outer Banks)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	is it better to speak or die?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamypope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamypope/gifts).



> follow my tumblr midsommers for more!
> 
> this was actually meant as a christmas gift for my aunt with different characters so sorry it's weird. if you say the name 'em' anywhere, my word replace didn't work and it should be jj instead.
> 
> i appreciate any and all comments!

For a moment, the loneliness sets in and I feel it, fully, truly, for the first time. It feels like a final kiss, scraping lips on cheeks, soft whispers and goodbyes, wandering eyes brighter than the sun. It feels  _ pink,  _ even though it should feel blue and grey, like the short stubs of flowers pushing through the ground when spring washes over the earth and everything starts to become easy. I imagine him saying goodbye, the same way Mama did, when I wasn’t anything yet and she didn’t love me. Shoes taken from by the door, clothing shoved into a bag, some his, some mine, everything he’s ever touched wiped down clean until it shines and the curtains will be flicked back to reveal the yard because he’s gone and I don’t need to hide anymore. The thought of being lonely, it sets in like a stone and all the words that have bubbled in my throat fade away. Mama used to say, I was like an ocean. I spread everywhere, touched everything, became powerful but when I needed to shout, the waves of words pulled back towards the horizon and I say nothing. If Mama were here, she would say Pope was like stardust. A thousand thoughts and thick emotions. Vibrant colours and the universe in his eyes. Open windows and doodles on skin; dancing without music, kissing in the rain. Glittery and golden. I stopped listening but he is still talking.  _ You don’t want me here, I’ll go.  _ It’s gone unsaid for days, the possibility of him leaving but him saying it now, hearing it in his voice, everything hurts and the loneliness starts to ache in me.  _ You can’t leave,  _ I say.  _ Why?  _ He says. Because I don’t want to become a ghost in my own home.  _ Because I need you to stay.  _ Nothing in him breaks, he does not change.  _ But do you want me?  _

_ I have always wanted you.  _

This time, something in Pope changes, he shifts, and his eyes look a little kinder, more like  _ him.  _ He doesn’t say he loves me, something I’m almost glad for, it won’t fix anything. Is it better to speak or die? He had once said to me, I can’t remember when, a winter, years ago. Back then, it seemed easier to speak. Back then, dying would have taken too long. Now, the words crash over me as I stand still. I let all the unspoken things poison my blood while I wait for death. Back then, it seemed odd that there would only be two options, and now it’s clear: you cannot stay silent and live as though you have been loud all your life. 

_ Do you want me to stay?  _

Everything felt pushed together, all fuzzy but his words ring clear through the room.

Yes. The house will become haunted if Pope leaves and I will rot. Tombstones are for the dead, Mama used to stay but I will have one long before I die if he leaves.  _ I never wanted you to leave.  _ I pull back the skin of my lip and let the metallic taste hit my teeth. I want a cigarette but they’re in my other jacket pocket and it feels wrong to walk away and get them.

_ JJ,  _ Pope starts to say, almost in a desperate way, like he’s scared to lose me. For a second, I regret not walking over to grab the cigarettes. He never finishes what he was going to say and I’m almost glad.  _ I have always wanted you,  _ I say again. I want to be loved and I want to be loved by him.  _ I want you to stay. _

I will say it a thousand times,  _ I want you to stay,  _ again and again, even after the sky falls and there is only us.  _ I have never wanted anyone to stay but you. _

Pope begins to break. I take a step forward, towards him. He doesn’t move and I don’t want him to. I want to go to him.  _ Do you want to leave? _

He doesn’t say anything. I think of Lola. Before Pope became a forever presence, Lola was there, when I was eight and she was nine. If I think hard enough, I can feel her tiny hands on my back as she pushes me on the swing behind her uncle’s house, the air thick with springtime and her laughs and my short hollow breaths. The sky ate us both up that day, the same way light and darkness do now. Lola’s fingers took her turn on the swing. There were two but neither of us were tall enough to get a start ourselves. We stayed out in the garden until night, when her mother shrieked out her name and we remembered the world wasn’t just us. 

Pope hasn’t said anything and he hasn’t moved. He’s still here, in front of me, we’re still together. He sighs and suddenly, I want to tell him everything.

_ Your eyes have always been my favourite colour. _

Something in him cracks.  _ I never wanted to leave. _

_ You want to stay,  _ I say. It starts as a question but I say it like it isn’t, like I am telling him he wants to say. There’s a far away nod and a crack of a smile and then, he’s standing in front of me.  _ So don’t go.  _ I can’t remember why he wanted to leave, why I thought he was going to leave. We are two halves of one whole, as the poets would say. His blood runs through my veins. I want to say, I love you, but it feels like wrong, like instead, we should just be here without words. I want to say, you are my person, because in that moment, I remember when he told me,  _ I have never been just for anyone.  _ We could never marry but marriage will never be the highest form of love. I don’t need the neighbour or the grocer in town or the woman at the park who looks like Mama to know I love him, I only need  _ him  _ to know. It’s not less than, it’s not less important, it’s just for us. 

Pope’s body shifts against mine and he wraps his arms tighter around me. I don’t want him to let go but after a moment, he does but neither of us take a step back.  _ JJ,  _ he starts again. His hand is lightly resting in the crook of my elbow, yet to fully let go of me. We’re still close together, chest to chest, knees almost knocking together. I tilt my chin up and kiss him, soft and dry, not anything romantic, just enough to let him know I’m still here, just enough to feel him for a second longer. Pope pulls away a moment later, just far enough that he can speak.  _ What do you want for dinner?  _ It’s all the wrong time but I kiss him once more and say,  _ whatever you want. _

  
  


* * *

Soap bubbles swirl around the tub in the hot water. Towels stay piled on the floor. A cool breeze floats in through the window to wash away the steam on the mirror. A vinyl record Pope put on fills up the hallway and the empty space in the bathroom. One of the towels, a light grey with red stains from an incident I can’t recall, has a hole torn in the center. The corners are frayed and the cloth is wet despite not being touched for days. There’s a crash from the kitchen so I offer a flimsy  _ are you okay  _ and step into the tub, door still open. My typewriter sits on top of the toilet, by the rack of towels. I almost reach for it but something stops me. I leave it alone and sink back in the water. The hot water washes over me. I close my eyes and try to stop thinking for a moment. I am flooded with memories.

_ When we were children, we were too scared to swim in July, but as soon as July melted into August and the heat wave settled like dust on the roofs of popsicle stick homes, we plunged deep into the rushing blue waters, letting it splash up to our hips, our shoulders, the sand at the bottom sticking to our toes and getting under the elastic of our bathing suits. Lola’s summer dress was the colour of lemons and it swayed around her knees, dancing in the wind like dry grass. My brother forgot sunscreen and we went home, all burnt up, skin the colour of cracking desert land. _

_ Lola slipped and scraped the skin off her knee on a rock, bleeding into the foam bubbling at the mouth of the river, crying all the way home, leaning against me, holding herself to fit the shape of my body. John B nearly drowned, head pushed under, legs flailing as we pulled him up, ear ringing long after he returned home. _

_ Sometimes, there was fish, grey ones the colour of rattlesnakes in the fields, blue ones that matched the sky and red ones that glowed bright from beneath the rocks. Sarah brought her bucket, stinging orange with a patched up hole in the side, all of us trying to catch one, grab it with your hands and toss it into the bucket of water, arguing the whole time about who would take it home. But we never catch one and it never leaves the river. _

_ John B got his dad to put a rope, a thick brown one that calloused your hands, on the branch over the deepest part of our river pool, so we could use it like a swing, letting go before our feet touched the water. Sarah was the first to use it and we all went after. _

_ We all chopped our hair short to keep it from getting caught in rocks. Dirt stayed under our nails because we didn’t scrub them after digging in the ground to let the water spread out. We let sweet cherries dye our lips red, tongues became the colour of watermelon, cheeks like pomegranates, eyes all bright and golden. The mosquitoes drained us but we didn’t mind, didn’t scratch, only stared up at the sky in the early morning as we hiked down the valley path to the river, the only dip in the land for miles. _

_ They say it’s going to be a warm summer every year, and as soon as August hits, we know it’s true. The sun sweats on us, dripping yellow, melting the land, our skin hot as we walk down to the river every morning and walk back just before dinner. We never stayed in the river too late, stayed just until the water wasn’t warm anymore and we still had enough energy to walk back. Once, we camped all night under the stars and swam all day, staying out without our parents, just us. We would play games, sometimes, chase each other around with sticks, shouting spells from made up words, letting the sounds bounce in our mouths, trading gum and playing cop and robbers.  _

_ We dreaded the start of school, wanting it to go on forever, the sun staying high and us splashing in the cool waters of the river. This could not go on forever, all of us here, wild, chasing each other with screams, without cares.  _

_ We’d spend our loose change on candies and soda without a thought to save it in a piggy bank, instead handing it over wiped clean counters to older siblings we had known once, smiling with our white grocery bags, shoving it into our pockets and skipping away. Kiara’s dad worked at the store, always slipping us extra gum or chocolate bars we’d eat right away instead of letting them melt in our pockets. _

_ We didn’t swim in July, only in August, never enough time, and school would start, pulling us away, Lola and I always together, Sarah linking arms with John B and Kiara, Sarah and John B never apart. This seemed like a forever thing, the seven of us always together even once we’d grown up and moved away from this town. _

It feels so long ago, when the only love that mattered was theirs and nothing else. We became lost in each other. Every year, we waited until August to swim and complained that it wasn’t enough time, never learning. The town never felt strange to us back then but when I visited it, nothing was right. Suddenly, I want to call to Pope.  _ Pope,  _ I say. There’s no response so I push my head under the water and close my eyes. When he does call back, minutes later, everything is waterlogged and distorted. It’s just my name, nothing else. It’s enough for me to lift myself out of the tub and drain the water. When I’m dressed, I hobble down into the kitchen and hug Pope from behind, resting my head on his shoulder. He shifts his body to fit mine perfectly. 

I’m not hungry anymore and I feel almost sick but I eat just enough so he won’t worry and take a few sips from his glass of wine. He says to leave the plates and I head up to our shared bedroom.

  
  


* * *

  
  


There’s never been a night where it didn’t happen.

The last thing Lola ever said to me was, I told you I was okay. I think I was lying. Why did you believe me?  __ And then, I can see the tree we used to climb. The swings she had taken down. The note in her pocket. The violet of her dress that used to feel like summer and only feels like bruising pain. Everyone asked me, were you in love with her? __ Choking out a yes to every person who asked seemed easiest, got them to leave me alone, even though it was a lie. 

I go to sleep and I am flooded with memories. I can’t remember anything but  _ that  _ day and it holds on tight to me. I can’t escape it. It seeps into my broken spaces and makes a home. Every night it spreads, gets a little worse.

Pope is still downstairs, it’s still early, and I’m alone. Usually, he’d tuck me a little closer to him and talk to me, tell me something with no importance that I didn’t have to think about.  _ Shit,  _ I mumble in the darkness, catching myself so I can’t fall deeper asleep. I want to turn on a light but instead, I stay in the dark, letting my eyes adjust. I can’t go back to sleep for a little while, not until the shaking stops. I step out of bed and into the hall, walk down towards Pope in the sitting room. He’s reading, not anything I recognize. He shifts slightly without looking up at me so I can fit into him. I do, pressing my face into his shoulder and closing my eyes. 

_ I’m sorry,  _ I say into his shoulder.  _ For everything. _

_ Don’t be sorry.  _ Pope doesn’t stop reading and I don’t move.

_ I am. I acted badly when your mother called, I took my anger out on you. I was horrible. _

Whenever his mother calls, I grab whatever coat is closest and run down to the lake, where I stay until I know she’s done talking and I am safe to go back inside. She has always hated me. When she called, days ago, maybe a Monday, maybe Tuesday, Pope had been out. I had answered, a mistake, I realized later, when she rattled on about the woman she had chosen for Pope. A woman, who was not me, with a richer family than mine (although, mine had never been richer and Mama barely scraped enough money together for the house) and a last name everyone knew. She was important, and a good fit for the family, to help expand their wealth and connections.  _ She’s better than me,  _ I had said when Pope came home and I told him about the call.  _ I’ll call her back.  _ His mother, no matter how many times he called, wouldn’t budge.  _ Talk to her.  _ He had stopped talking about it then, moved on to the next thing. When he called her back, three days later, I had caught the end of it, when I arrived home too early.  _ I’ll train up and meet her.  _ I said nothing then, and nothing when he left early the next day to catch the eight o’clock train in town. Work hadn’t needed me that day, so I sat in the bathroom, without water, clothing on, with my typewriter in my lap. Pope had once told me, don’t throw out what you’ve written, even if you hate it, so I slipped the sheets of paper in his bedside drawer. That day, I walked down too the farmer’s market and bought an apple pie, even though the ones I made were better, sitting in the swing in the garden and eating the pie without slicing it, sometimes flicking loose crust pieces at the flowers with my fork. When it got closer to dinner and Pope still wasn’t home, I switched to whiskey and turned on the stupid record he loved so much and I hated. I was drunk before five and picked up the phone, not knowing who would pick up. Pope did, and I snarled a  _ fuck you  _ before slaming the phone back down on the receiver and heading into the kitchen. There was nothing in the cupboards, we barely kept alcohol and nothing I wanted to eat from the pantry. I considered stumbling out to the garden and ripping half grown vegetables from the dirt, because I could. I hadn’t been drunk like that in years. Around eight, when I was stumbling around blind, I fell backwards into Pope when he opened the door, collapsing in his arms instead of hitting my head on the door, like I had expected. He walked me to bed without a word and in the morning, he was gone.

The anger in both of us bubbled for most of the week. We avoided each other most of the day and piled into bed at different times. When I was shaken awake by my own nightmares, Pope would place a light hand on my arm without looking at me and didn’t say anything about it in the morning. This morning, days after Pope’s trip home, his mother called to confirm the date for another meeting. I picked up, even though Pope was home. She had nothing to say to me and hung up after discovering it was me on the phone. I had yelled at the phone, at Pope, at the stray cat in the yard. Pope stayed quiet through it all. I turned to him, and in the same snarly voice I had used over the phone,  _ go. Go to her. Just go.  _ We had grown farther apart in the past few days then we had in all the years of knowing each other. Pope hadn’t moved in minutes, and hadn’t moved now. He had lost his Pope softness in my shouts and stood with an unrecognizable, non-Pope look on his face.  _ Go and marry the whore your mother set you up with.  _ I don’t need to shout anymore, all those words are enough to hurt him.

_ You don’t want me here, I’ll go. _

Pope is still next to me, still reading his book so I say,  _ I’m sorry, a thousand times over. I will always love you, forever.  _ Most people, I’d add a probably, I’ll probably love you forever, but with Pope, there isn’t a probably, only a forever.  _ I acted like an idiot and said horrible things I didn’t mean and you didn’t deserve to hear.  _ I want to say, go, if you want, I won’t force you to stay, only I want him to stay so I say nothing else. Pope has put the book down on the other side of the couch and stayed quiet.

_ You know, I read the poems you put in my drawer.  _ They weren’t poems, not really, but there wasn’t another good word for them. I had forgotten about them for the most part, forgotten what I wrote. Every time I show him a collection of short poems, I’d ask him which one he liked best.  _ Which one was your favourite,  _ I ask as I turn up to look at him. He’s smiling now. 

_ The one you had left unnamed. _

I’m smiling now too.  _ Don’t cry until everything breaks. I don’t want to have to hold myself before the world breaks. In the split second we have before the sky falls, just after the mountains melt and can’t hold up the heavens, hiding becomes everything. We don’t want to be seen by the monsters when the sun dips below the earth’s curves and space wraps around the world like a cloak. Nothing matters when nothing exists. _

Pope curves into me a little.  _ Yeah, I like that one.  _ A beat of silence.  _ Write me something. _

_ Now? _

_ Yes, now. Just give it a shot.  _

I laugh then say,  _ give me a moment. _

Pope waits. Pope always waits. I take a deep breath, try to organize my thoughts.

_ There is a loneliness in my soul where your mouth, your lips should be. It feels all empty, like a cookie jar left out to stale and a door left open, the snow rushing in. I see you, with her, your fingers moving so delicately to weave a crown of flowers. She drops it in the sand when you take her hand to stand her up. As soon as you are gone, I pick it up and it turns to thorns at my touch. She is gone, you are gone. You are too smart to love me, I learn. This is the winter. Everything goes cold and I am all alone without a lover. I watch you with her and all my insides shatter like glass without a broom to come and sweep them up. Nothing happens anymore. I stopped living the moment you kissed her instead of me, I stopped everything from happening. I watched you, your smile, your eyes, and how they change with the seasons. They crack in the winter and grow over in the spring, all new. By summer, they are forests of love and life. She is rain, drowning me, growing you. I am all alone without you. I want to hate her but I cannot. I cannot hate her for having something I was too scared to get. She is killing me without knowing, and she will never know. I will smile, teeth to eye. Stretched far enough for you to think it is real. I want to dance with you. I said goodbye to Eden, for you and you chose her. Nothing grows inside me anymore, the soil too soggy, the sun without shine. Maybe I deserve this. I am unlovable. First comes the fire. Everything hurts. My skin melts and my bones are picked apart with blackened sticks made of ash. Second is the flood. Water rushes above my shoulders and waves shake in my lungs. Foams pours out of my mouth and bubbles explode in my hands, feet. My body is an ocean. The tide draws out and I must face the changing of the seasons. The earth does not reward lovers and good people. I go home. Wherever that is now that I have lost you. She is still here. I shut my eyes. _

The words are out before I can stop them.  _ I didn’t mean- _ I start.  _ No,  _ Pope says.  _ I love it.  _ Every fear I’d had from the past few days, all wrapped in one poem. 

_ Can I try again?  _ Pope nods.  _ When you arrive home, winter will be waiting for you. The dogs bounce off your ankles and the wife shaped loneliness grows wider. Your boots kick up the early snow as you walk up to the front door. Your neighbors' swing in the front yard tips slightly into your garden instead of stopping at the fence line. The clouds pass and the sky seems even greyer. Your mother died before she could visit and there’s nothing to look forward to. The blueberry pie sits on the kitchen counter, one slice pulled out of the tin and the rest left to rot. Unlike so many others, you don’t know how to be lonely.  _ Everything is silent and I remember in the silence.

I remember, a friend came over, one of Pope’s I liked more than the rest. We mopped the floors with hot tea water. Pope moved the furniture while I boiled the water. My folded over pant legs kept sliding down, Pope called me over and tucked them up in a way that only he could and they stayed in place. Halfway through, he pulled me towards him by the strap of my overalls, tucking his hand into my back pocket as he kissed me. We danced in the open space until it was time to start dinner and still, Pope twirled around the kitchen.

I remember, he had asked me what kind of wine I liked. I didn’t like much, and not anything expensive. He never asked again, but he always remembered what I had said. When he first kissed me, we were both slightly drunk on the wine, tipping into each other as we giggled loudly on the front porch. It was snowing, it seemed like our relationship was built on snow. He laughed, his face barely touching mine, and then he kissed me. I pulled away and he stepped out into the yard and sunk into the snow. He shouted, is it better to act or die? I tumbled down into him and said, the only way to die is to act. Pope kissed me then, like I had answered his unanswerable question and suddenly, we became one. His blood in my body, his breath mixing with mine, our tears from the same ocean. 

I remember, the first thing Pope ever asked me. When did you learn to be lonely? And I asked him, are you a poet? He said, no, I am just a man. I replied, isn’t every poet just a man and he told me he liked me very much. I said to him later, when we were squished together by my aunt at dinner, I was always lonely. Pope smiled and invited me for coffee. He asked me everything interesting thing. What season feels like home? What colour is love? Are words big enough to shatter the earth? Is hello lonPopeer than goodbye? 

Winter, if I ever had one. Deep purples and bright oranges. Only the right ones. Hello reminds you how lonely you’ve been, goodbye makes sure you stay lonely.

Then, three weeks later, is it better to speak or die?

Pope says,  _ what are you thinking? _

_ Is it better to speak or die? _


End file.
